Our Research

U-Flourish student well-being translational research launched in 2018 under the direction of Principal Investigator Dr. Anne Duffy with grant funding from The Rossy Family Foundation in partnership with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The aim was to address the need for large scale reliable data about the mental health burden and scope of support needs in students transitioning to higher education. Since, the funded research has expanded with competitive grants and philanthropic gifts to translate findings into solutions in partnership with students and other Canadian universities. This work has also been adapted at 5 UK institutions under the banner of Nurture-U. With a major gift from the Rossy Family Foundation, the U-Flourish Centre was founded with the aim to go beyond individual term grants and ensure sustainability and continued improvement and innovation through four workstreams: innovative mental health support, a compassionate learning community, building capacity through training, and knowledge translation and implementation science.

U-Flourish Centre Workstreams

1. Innovative mental health support to develop a cohesive system of effective, accessible, and student-tailored educational programs, resources, digital tools, and care pathways addressing the spectrum of need and barriers and gaps, while being scalable and adaptable

2. Compassionate learning community to identify enablers and barriers to institutional well-being including values, historical legacies of exclusion, social connectedness, mindful pedagogy and develop evidence informed sustainable, scalable, and integrated compassionate campus initiatives 

3. Building capacity through training of the next generation of educators, multidisciplinary translational researchers, policy experts and clinician scholars in student mental health through graduate studies, transdisciplinary research and clinical training opportunities, collaboration across disciplines and support for learning exchanges

4. Knowledge translation and implementation science to ensure that research findings and resulting solutions are shared and have the greatest impact, research outcomes will be curated, adapted and packaged as off-the-shelf educational resources and digital tools in collaboration with interested partner institutions and their students